Two fundamental rules for an effective sales challenge
If you organize sales challenges, you're probably looking to optimize certain parameters to maximize efficiency and boost team performance. The more systems you put in place, the more experience you gain and the more best practices you identify.
It's this condensed feedback that we'd like to offer through the sales challenge guide we're publishing in partnership with Glady.
It is based on the results of a survey of sales managers, challenge organizers and participants. It enables us to conduct an audit of sales promotion practices. Throughout the book, you'll learn about the key criteria for successful challenges.
So, here are the two fundamental rules to keep in mind when setting up your next sales challenge.
Rule no. 1: vary the length of sales challenges to be effective
When is the right time to organize a sales challenge? How long should it last? These are two recurring questions from challenge organizers.
To answer this question, let's return to our goal as sales managers: to achieve our year-end targets. To do this, you need to generate commitment over time, you need to be motivated throughout the year.
Commitment is represented schematically in the graph above. As you can see, engagement is not constant over time. With sales challenges, there's a risk of a "soufflé" effect, i.e. engagement quickly falls back when they stop. Our aim is to eliminate this "soufflé" effect, to obtain a more regular engagement curve over time.
One of the main ways of smoothing out this commitment, while maintaining peak performance, is to propose objectives with different time horizons. Short-term objectives (weeks/months) to boost commitment. But also long-term objectives to smooth out efforts throughout the year.
Rule n°2: vary the types of rewards for your sales challenges
The reward! Whether you're an organizer or a participant, it's the first thing on your mind when the challenge begins.
Everyone agrees that rewards are first and foremost material. According to our survey, over 60% of participants prefer bonuses or gift vouchers, for example. Their motivating power is undeniable, and they are recommended in all employee incentive initiatives. This is all the more true with sales people, who are used to the "performance = remuneration" scheme.
What about other motivational levers?
However, saying that material rewards are indispensable does not mean that they are the only effective motivational lever. 100% of sales challenges should offer material rewards, but 100% of challenges should also offer other motivational levers. These are often the forgotten elements of sales challenges.
These levers are, for example, cooperation, surpassing oneself or recognition from colleagues or managers.
Below is an overview of the different motivational levers. As you can see, bonuses and gifts are only a small part of what's possible when it comes to incentives.
In fact, this case study shows quite clearly the impact of non-financial motivators on performance.
To sum up, and to go even further...
Setting up a sales challenge is a great way of motivating teams and boosting performance. But they are often not used to their full potential. There are a number of parameters that need to be fine-tuned to get the most out of them. To find out more, download our 2024 sales challenge guide.
